16. Alone on the Shore

 

Alone on the Shore

Zixxes tries to control his breathing but his lungs are not having it. 

He feels wet air blow like a storm past his lips only to be dragged back dry and rough down his throat. He feels himself shout something but he cannot hear it over the sound of the rushing water or the blood screaming in his ears. Nessuna gets to the other shore, both feet planted on the loose ground, her back still to him. He wants to yell to her to get farther away from the water’s edge. 

He wants to scream at all of them to step away before something crawls out of the vicious waves to drag them back to a watery death.

 He wants to set fire to the river until it is naught but cracked earth they can conquer with their feet alone.

But he can do none of those things if he does not control his breathing. 

The Teifling woman turns around but seems to falter for a moment when her eyes land on him. It is only a moment, but he catches it.

Something she sees in him has given her reason to worry. To believe that she had not been safe, that he was not stable. A glance at the others on the opposite bank show the same worried expression. Maximilian joins Tiffani at the rope and the shame of this failure is enough to give him some mastery over himself. 

He slows his breathing forcefully, ignoring the way each inhale shakes with fear. He wraps the rope in another tight rotation around his granite forearm. Even with his rocklike skin, he knows it is too tight; his flesh nearly white with bloodlessness. He cannot feel his arm anymore and he doesn’t know when that began. 

His feet are still firmly braced apart and he can feel that his center is strong and steady. This is enough for him. It has to be. There will not be another mishap. He will make sure of it. 

He takes another breath–doing his best to remove the shake from it–and looks up to his last remaining compatriot on the bankside. 

Miss Noori looks into his eyes, her gaze shifting from one eye to the other quickly as if looking for something. Zixxes does his best to push forward confidence and assurance, to make her feel at ease. 

To hide his fear.

Her gaze finally settles on his face as a whole and whatever she sees has her already-gentle gaze softening even further. She shuffles closer to him, holding out a hand before her and Zixxes digs his feet in the marshy land even deeper thinking she is going to test his stance with a push to ascertain how safe she will be. 

He is stone.

He will not be moved.

He will pass this test for the good of the clan– For the good of this party. 

But instead of a shove, she lays a soft hand on his arm, just above the rope. Zixxes flinches at the butterfly feel of her light touch. He feels a sudden rushing of cool air and the scent of an old day turning into the new fills his nostrils. His shoulders drop several notches and tension abates a bit.

“It’s okay to be scared,” the Firbolg woman says softly. “I’m afraid too.”

Zixxes feels himself deflate even more at the kind words–half an echo of his mothers. As they pass through his mind, he knows he has failed this test.

But Miss Noori is still looking at him with a soft hand on his arm and a softer smile on her face, so he nods.

She nods in return and turns back to the water’s edge, untying the large gingham cloth from her waist and tying it to the rope much like Nessuna had before. But instead of clutching the rope close, she sits in the hanging cloth like a hammock. 

She begins her slow journey across the water, keeping her legs raised in a straight line and her bottom hovering only inches above the water. She pulls herself hand over hand across the distance.

She has not gotten too far on her journey when suddenly, just like with Nessuna, she is falling and Zixxes doesn’t know why.

He shouts. He doesn’t even know if he says any actual words but he feels the pain of it as a sound explodes from his lungs.

Water splashes tall and white as she drops down, and for a moment he sees nothing. His breathing has stopped. 

No.

No!

The water settles but his vision is white and he can see nothing. He just hears the water, the blood in his ears, the loss, the shouts, the failure.

The shouts?

Shouting.

Zixxes forces his brain to focus on that. The shouting. It is calling his name. 

“Ok… xxes, I’m… just…with me.”

Zixxes pushes away the white, focusing. He is needed here, he cannot not give in. Not yet. 

When his vision returns, there is water and rope and a head, and a face turned toward him. 

Miss Noori is hanging onto the rope with one hand, the other is wrapped in the cloth being tugged away in the river's flow.

But her gaze is not on the rope or her destination. Her eyes are on him. 

“See, yes. I’m okay, Zixxes,” she shouts over the noise of the river. “We need to breathe. Breathe with me. Okay, just breathe.”

Zixxes wants to tell her to ignore him and keep going. He wants to tell her to let go of the blasted cloth still trying to sell her life to the waters pulling at her body, wants to tell her to save her breath for the work ahead. 

But he can’t.

His throat is constricted so tightly that he is barely able to breathe as she commands. 

But he tries. Because he knows if he doesn’t, she will not move on. And she needs to get out of the water.

He needs her to get out of the water.

So he nods back and once again takes command of his breath until it is steady enough to speak again.

“Please, go,” he says, voice soft and cracking. 

There is no way she is able to hear his small voice over the river but she must have read his lips. She nods and turns back to the other shore. She brings her other hand, still entangled with the cloth, to the rope and begins to drag her long form to their companions on the other side. 

The process is slow. Much slower than any of the others, but she makes it to the other shore and is dragged out by the other members of the party.

As soon as the others lay hands on her, Zixxes collapses. Falling first to his knees and then to his face. Cheek pressed in the wet ground as he loses control over his breathing for a third time and his whole body shakes. 

He hears the others calling his name and he needs to get it together. He has to.

They cannot be waylaid here because of his inability to just hold strong.

There is a child’s life that hangs in the balance. 

If only he could stop shaking.

“It is fine to be afraid,” his mother’s voice rings in his ears and his breath catches. “But you must not show it. If you show your fear, you act on it and thereby sign the death of any clan you lead.”

A sob rises up in Zixxes. He feels the familiar bubble of it push up from his stomach and into his chest. He crushes it down with vicious habit. 

He gives himself one more moment to breathe in the wet earth. Just one more. And then he is pushing himself up to sit back on his heels and meets the worried gazes of his party on the other side. Worry is rife in every expression.

Worry he has failed to quail. 

Worry that he put there.

“I’m okay,” Miss Noori calls across to him. “See, I am just fine.”

Zixxes nods tightly, jaw working. 

“Is there truly no tree nearby you can anchor the end to?” Maximilian calls. 

And Zixxes is grateful for a distraction, for an action to take. He looks around, but there are no trees near enough to use. He does have another rope in his pack that might give them the length needed, but he is not confident his shaking hands can tie a faithful knot in this moment. 

He looks back at the group across the water and the people waiting on him to cross so they can continue on their mission.

He looks back at the rope in his hands. 

He doesn't want to do what he knows needs to be done.

Your choices are never just about you, his mother’s voice whispers to him.

He stands and begins to uncoil the rope from his arm. Blood rushes into the freed appendage with the stab of a thousand invisible needles. 

“You will have to pull me across,” he shouts to the group, eyes firmly on his own hands as he coils the rope around his waist and begins to tie it around himself.

“Alright,” he hears Maximillian call.

“Sounds good,” Tiffani says one moment later. 

He hears nothing from the women.

He looks up and sees worry on both of their faces and grits his teeth. He has done this and now he has to fix it. 

Or they would never have trust in him. 

Once the rope is tied, he takes a few steps forward and wraps some of the length around his forearm once more for extra security.

“I’m ready,” he calls.

Nessuna and Miss Noori take up pieces of the rope as well. Miss Noori still has soft concern painted across her expression, but Nessuna seems determined as she grips the rope between her hands. 

He doesn't want to wait another moment so he rushes into the waves, trusting these strangers in the same way they had trusted him to hold them steady through their own journeys across the water. 

The first few steps are fine, the water barely rises to his shin.

In the next step, the river bottom disappears from under his feet. For a second, he is weightless…

And he is swept sideways by the current and dragged down as the dark water swallows him whole.

{Part Seventeen: River Steeped}